(PS5-C54) Advancing Innovation in Youth Mental Health Assessment: A Measurement Invariance Study Between American and Korean Youth on Self-reported CBT Skills

Promoting cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques and strategies typically manifests within the context of treatment delivery for persons formally identified with mental health issues. Complementary to this traditional approach, the Social-Emotional Evidence-Based Developmental Strengths Assessment (SEEDS; Ebesutani, 2019) is a novel tool that leverages distillation methodology to screen and track youth social-emotional competencies across important practice element domains comprehensively. More specifically, the SEEDS is a youth self-report measure that queries the utilization of a variety of practice elements (e.g., cognitive restructuring, social skills), thereby aiming to assess the implementation of evidence-based strategies for addressing anxiety and depression, all towards the larger goal of improving CBT outcomes.

The SEEDS has been tested with a large Korean sample (Ebesutani, 2019) and with an English-speaking population (Matsui & Nakamura, 2022), exhibiting various forms of reliability and validity. However, the extent to which the SEEDS is able to perform as a reliable and valid measure has yet to be studied cross-culturally. The current study will examine measurement invariance between Korean-speaking fourth through sixth graders from Korea (N = 460) and an ethnically diverse (e.g., 60.6% multi-ethnic, 16% Asian, 3.8% Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander) English-speaking fourth through sixth-grade youth sample from Hawaii (N = 504). Preliminary analysis of demographic data for youth participants thus far indicates 29% fourth graders, 23% fifth graders, 48% sixth graders, and 50.2% male (n = 231) for the Korean-speaking sample. Participants from Hawaii included 47% fourth graders, 32% fifth graders, 21% sixth graders, and 51% male (n = 257).

There are two aims to the current study. First, a hierarchical confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) will be conducted to examine measurement invariance between Korean-speaking youth and English-speaking youth, testing configural, metric, and scalar models. Based on Ebesutani’s (2019) and Matsui and Nakamura’s (2022) findings, this study hypothesizes that the SEEDS will demonstrate a hierarchical structure of a second-order three-factor model with 13 first-order factors (i.e., practice element skills). If measurement invariance is achieved, our second aim will include exploratorily comparing the latent mean differences in higher-order SEEDS scale scores (i.e., Thoughts, Behaviors, Interpersonal) between the two samples. If scalar measurement invariance is not achieved, items with poor factor loadings will be removed until scalar invariance is achieved; then, we will proceed with exploratory comparisons. Theoretical and empirically supported fit models and indices will be explored and presented. Implications and future areas of research, such as cross-cultural considerations in strength-based distillation and cognitive behavioral therapy implementation will be discussed.